Notes From A Bear's Journey

Blood Moon over NY...Photo: Alexander Krivenyshev of World Time Zone      I was young, just turned 17, just got my license and heading down Pacific Coast Highway in the 1957 Ford my dad sold me for $100.  It was summer and I was meeting some friends at Tin Can Beach, the ugly cousin of Huntington Beach just over the hill.  Bolsa Chica was its real name but everyone called it Tin Can Beach, its sands dirty and ruffled, its waves equally crappy.  Nobody went in the water.  It was never patrolled, not like the surrounding beaches that had lifeguards every 200 feet or so.  Here, you were on your own.  You could build bonfires here, the traditional escape for high school kids like me, piling driftwood together, maybe sneaking in a beer or two, a place to laugh and try to make out with your girlfriend, the stuff you see in movies.  Bolsa Chica is a long stretch of highway, the next traffic light perhaps two miles away as if even the cars wante...

     I have discovered (or perhaps just admitted to myself) that I am not paying attention, which is not to say that I don't notice things, although "notice" might be a bit too strong a description.  "Glimpse" might be more appropriate.  And all of this after writing earlier about becoming more "aware" in one's surroundings, about taking the time to notice the details, about trying to slow down and to just  "take it all in" patiently and naturally.  To enjoy and absorb life.  Hmm, who was that masked man who said that?     It is far too easy to slide into a routine, to Groundhog Day the seasons and to celebrate birthdays until (as one tee shirt says) you're surprised to discover that you're hanging around a lot of old people.  Dan Schilling wrote about this slow diminishing of being aware of your surroundings (albeit from his Special Ops perspective) and I must admit that the scene from the first of the Jason Bourne series has h...

     As the spring rains (and snow) continue, I remain puzzled by the number of lawn mowers I hear, my neighbors already out putting down spring fertilizer, their unnaturally-green lawns almost an oddity, their lawn "marks" crisscrossing as neatly as baseball fields.  This is not to say that I haven't been out there as well, clearing up the leftover leaf cover and stray clumps of pine needles that have, I hope, sheltered a few wintering bugs and bulbs.  But it did bring to mind the comment that author John Green wrote, that an alien species coming down to visit would wonder what is that "god" we revere, this green expanse we water and fertilize and mow but yet rarely use, this Kentucky bluegrass lawn, a seed which is neither from Kentucky nor is blue.     Then again, a beautiful lawn is captivating, be it those royal Tudor-like lawns of monarchy or pristine golf courses.  One could almost say that such sights are beautiful, but at what cost?...

     Those are words no chess player cares to hear.  Mate.  It means that no matter how many moves you may now make, the game is over (so well exemplified in the Netflix series, The Queen's Gambit ).  And there are times where I feel in a similar mood, stuck in the mud with few directions left, perhaps my age telling me that the "game" of my life is nearing its end.  Which is not at all depressing, at least not in the sense that I've lost, or am about to lose, for my life has been extraordinarily filled will good and will hopefully continue.  I have, in a word, been more than fortunate.  But that said, I do feel as if I have moved from being a player to perhaps a coach at one point, but am now a fan in the bleachers, content to just watch and enjoy.  There is a lot to see when viewing life from these high seats, things both good and bad, happy and sad, encouraging and depressing. Photo: Nat Geo photographer Kiana Hayeri     ...

     My thoughts swirled like a whirlwind of tiny dust particles caught in a beam of sunlight when it hits the living room floor...random, floating, too small to grasp or capture, plentiful.  Much of this was because I had been sporadically reading a number of those Best American series of books.  It's something I do every three years or so, order about 8 or 10 of the books from past years (in this case from 2017 to 2020) and see what I may have missed.  New (to me at least) was the series Best American Food Writing (their other collections span everything from sports to science & nature, short stories to mysteries, travel to poetry, and more, even comics and non-required reading).  As before, I found it dazzling to read just from the few I had ordered.  The writing was as terrific as in past years, and reminded me of the difficult task each editor faces when honing down the list from the hundreds and hundreds of submitted published pieces, t...